State students vote against fee increase

N.C. State students participating in a non-binding vote rejected a requested increase of $25.50 in the school’s yearly intercollegiate athletics fee.

Student Senate president Greg Doucette revealed the results after a total of 3,400 students voted on requested fee increases Monday and Tuesday.

Athletics officials are asking for an increase that would add about $500,000 per year to its operating budget.

The athletics fee currently is $134.

Twenty-four percent of the students voted for the full increase of $25.50, and 19 percent voted for an increase of $12.25.

In an e-mail, Doucette explained that the 57 percent rejection was an improvement for the athletic department after a 74 percent rejection a year ago.

“I think students don’t want to pay more money as a matter of principle, but they like athletics a lot more this year as a result of the student-requested changes they’ve made to things like ticketing procedure,” Doucette wrote.

Seventy-two percent of the students rejected a $30 increase in the current $66 athletics debt fee.

The increase would be used to improve facilities for soccer, track and baseball as well as constructing a new football field at Carter-Finley Stadium.

A sampling of student votes on other fee increases:

• Fifty-one percent rejected an education and technology increase of $20.
• Sixty-one percent rejected a student center operations increase of $26.82.
• Forty-five percent rejected a recreational sports increase of $10.24.
  The students’ vote provides the fee advisory committee with a gauge of campus opinion.

The committee will recommend fees to chancellor James Oblinger.

If Oblinger accepts the recommendations, he can forward them to the board of trustees and the UNC system board of governors for approval.